


Mutual interests

by fandomnumbergenerator



Series: Jurassic Times [2]
Category: Constantine (TV), Hellblazer & Related Fandoms
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-16
Updated: 2015-06-16
Packaged: 2018-04-04 17:50:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4147161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fandomnumbergenerator/pseuds/fandomnumbergenerator
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How did Ritchie, a math, computer science and comparative religion genius, and an American, end up tangled up with the Mucous Membrane crew?</p><p>I was just trying to mash young punk Constantine together with everyone, but this one really got away from me.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mutual interests

Ritchie was technically a genius. He had solved the a key part of Fermat’s Last Theorem when he 15. (Fermat, by the way, was full of shit with his “Hanc marginis exiguitas non caperet.”) And Ritchie was now the youngest lecturer at the City University of London.

None of which explained what he was doing sitting in the farthest corner of a crappy bar, buying a beer for the sketchiest kid he could find. He and Gary (or Gaz or whatever his name was) were trying to figure out the extent of their mutual interests, and so far, it was kind of disappointing. Clearly there was speed somewhere in England. That was what Mod had been all about, right? But Gary, for all his obvious shiftiness, was just a stoner. Though he did know a surprising amount about Faulkner’s translation of the Papyrus of Ani.

Which is when Ritchie realized this was really not going in the direction he’d been hoping. The way the kid was talking, it sounded like he’d stumbled into some kind of Egyptology book club. Which normally he might be up for. Guest access to the Bodleian special collections had been one of the main perks of his lectureship. But not tonight. Tonight he was depressed and antsy and his skin didn’t fit right, and he was regretting his whole plan of moving thousands of miles away from his drug connections.

So Ritchie was trying to gently extract himself from the conversation, when a ridiculously dressed retro-punk kid came bounding over and put Gary in a headlock. Ritchy spent a tense moment worried that Gary was in serious danger. Maybe the silly outfit indicated some particularly nasty subcultural affiliation? But then he saw that Gary was laughing, and that the kid was apparently trying to lick him. He never had been very good at parsing the rituals of male friendship.

“So, Gaz, introduce me to your new friend.” Belligerent, but also a little camp, and Ritchie had no idea if they were a couple, or if this was some kind of frat boy joke. 

“John, this is Ritchie. He knows about that Egyptian book of yours.” And then Ritchie seemed to come into focus for John, who was suddenly looking at him very intently.

“You’re new around here,” said John

“I work at the university,” said Ritchie, specifically not saying he was lecturer, which would raise a whole other set of questions.

But John squinted at him for a moment, and said, “No. I know who you are. You’re that maths genius that was in the paper. The one with a special interest in the use of algorithms in Egypt and Sumeria.” Ritchie was a little taken about. He hadn’t realized he’d made such a splash. “So what are you doing here? At the worst bar in town? No offense, Molly.” He winked at the bartender, and she gave him a cheerful two finger salute. “It’s either drugs or boys. Or magic.” He looked Ritchie up and down, “Or all three.”

Ritchie still wasn’t sure where this was going. But he did know that these two kids were causing such a ruckus that there was pretty much no chance he was going to be finding speed tonight. Which was probably for the best anyway.

Of the three options, magic seemed the safest, or at least offered the most plausible deniability. “So, you’ve read Faulkner’s translation. Do you think he’s right about the six new spells?”

“I think he translated them wrong.”

Now it was Ritchie’s turn to look John up and down. “What, are you an Egyptologist?”

“No. But they don’t work.”

Ritchie barked out a laugh. “Of course they don’t work.”

And the John smirked at him. Tapped a cigarette out of his pack and put it in his mouth. But instead of pulling out a lighter, he snapped his fingers, and lit the cigarette off the flame coming out his thumb. Then he blew out his thumb. Ritchie looked at John, and then at John’s unsinged thumb, and then suspiciously down at his own beer.

“What in the actual, ever-living, fuck was that?” But he knew. It smelled like magic. It felt like magic. It was mother-fucking magic.

And John was giving him a toothy, predatory grin, “So, _Richard_ , you have access to the books, and I know how to use them. I think we have the outlines a deal. Have your people call my people.” With a theatrical flourish, John pulled a smudged and very dog-eared business card out of the key pocket of his leather jacket. Then he downed Gary's drink and skipped out of the bar, leaving Gary and Ritchie staring after him.

Gary spoke first. “So what _are_ you doing here, if it wasn’t some occult thing.”

“Actually, I was looking for speed,” Ritchie said a little sheepishly, too dazed to come up with a plausible lie.

Gary looked affronted, but also like maybe this wasn’t the first time this had happened to him. “And that’s why you bought me a beer? I thought you were, you know, a fan or something, of Mucous Membrane. This is, you know, our bar. John and I are here all the time.”

“So, you’re together?”

Gary tried to look affronted again, but it came off a lot more complicated than he probably intended, and his, “No,” left enough room that Ritchie asked, “But, what?”

“He kisses me on stage,” Gary said in a rush. “If you’d, you know, seen one of our shows, you’d know that. Drives the goth chicks wild.”

“Oh, you poor kid.”

Gary looked at him, and seemed to understand that he could drop the bravado, and relaxed into a kind of companionable melancholy. “You smoke, man. I’ve got some killer bud back at my place.”

“I’m already paranoid and antisocial enough. Last thing I need is weed. But I have a nice bottle of Scotch back at my flat. I think I’m going to need a little fortification before I can get my head around the evening’s events.”

Which is how Ritchie ended up bringing the sketchiest kid in an already sketchy bar back to his place. Though, up close, Gary was not actually that sketchy. He was cute, and a bit of a lost puppy, with permanently dark circles under his sad blue eyes, and a mouth that seemed to fall naturally into a little frown. And Ritchie was not unattractive when he was looking after himself, even with the big ears and the deep set eyes. And right now, while he was trying to keep up appearances for his new job, he was nowhere near his usual crazy mountain man territory.

So they weren’t the most unlikely hookup. Though he wasn’t sure Gary realized that’s where this was going. That when they got back to Ritchie’s tiny pre-furnished flat, Gary’s curiosity was going to get the better of him. His need to figure out whether it was about more than being in love with his best friend. Which in Ritchie’s experience was not really the right question. But, whatever.

So they ended up sitting a little too close on Ritchie’s hideous sofa, nursing their glasses of very good Scotch. But by the third time Gary brought the conversation back around to John, Ritchie was getting ready to offer to sleep on the sofa so Gary could have the bed. Which Gary probably sensed, because he gulped the rest of his drink and sort of lunged at Ritchie.

Gary, it turned out, was a very good kisser. Nipping and sucking on Ritchie’s lip before pushing the kiss deeper. Just the right amount of greedy without being sloppy. Ritchie, pulled him closer, practically onto his lap, which inspired Gary to straddle him, grinding him back into the sofa, chasing more friction.

Ritchie pulled back. “This is going to work better in a bed.” Gary nodded, and stood up a little clumsily. Ritchie stood up and kissed him and led him into the bedroom. Pulled off Gary’s T-shirt, then his own. Kissed him again, running his hand along Gary’s bare shoulders and back, which were pale and lean, with a badly done Mucous Membrane tattoo on his left pec, which was kind of sweet, and kind of sad. Ritchie nudged him backwards, until Gary got the hint and sat down on the edge of the bed. Ritchie knelt down and unlaced Gary’s boots, pulled them off. Unbuttoned the fly of Gary’s jeans, and pulled them off too. Looked up at Gary, who gave a tiny nod of his head. Ritchie guided him backwards on the bed. Kissed him, then kissed down his chest. Rubbed his cheek against Gary erection through his underwear. Breathed hot damp air through the cotton, and got a satisfying twitch in response. Pulled the elastic band up and over and pulled the underwear off. Licked a stripe up the underside and Gary groaned. Then he licked his way further down. Balls. Perineum. Ass. And he pushed Gary’s knees up until Gary got the idea and held them up himself. He did a couple experimental licks with one hand lightly resting on Gary’s cock, and was encouraged by the way it strained up into his hand, the noises Gary was making, the way he was starting to rock his hips, and Ritchie’s cock twitched in sympathy. And Ritchie left his hand there when he pulled back to reach over and rummage in his drawer for lube.Then he smeared it on both hands, grasping and stroking Gary’s cock with one hand while he started with one finger. He nudged Gary’s knees down, and took the head of Gary’s cock in his mouth, the hand still at the base. Sucking and stroking and adding another finger. Until Gary was arching up between his fingers and his mouth, everything tight and tensed, the moment before he came, around his fingers and in his mouth

Ritchie pulled out his fingers, kissed Gary’s hip, and crawled up to nuzzle into his neck.

Gary rolled them over, and started kissing down Ritchie’s chest.

“You don’t need to.”

Gary said, “OK,” but kept going. Using back on Ritchie the things he’d just showed him. A little awkward, a little tentative, but eager to please, and Ritchie kept up a stream of hnnngs and unnnhs to let Gary know he was doing well.

Afterwards, Ritchie kissed him gently, and got up to bring him a wet towel. Told him, “Go to sleep. I have some work to do.”

He left Gary in his bed, and pulled down his well-thumbed copy of The Papyrus of Ani, trying to get his head around how much of his already tenuous sanity he was going to burn through now that he knew that magic was real.

**Author's Note:**

> In my mind, everyone is about the same age (~20 in the early 2000s), except Ritchie, who’s only a couple years older, even though he calls everyone kid (and even though Jeremy Davies is actually 12 years older than Matt Ryan).
> 
> It is pretty unlikely that a teenager could have solved Fermat’s Last Theorem, but the story around Andrew Wiley working on it in secret in his attic made a big splash in the 90s. In 1637, Fermat wrote “I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of this, which this margin is too narrow to contain,” but since the proof actually relied on fields of mathematics that would not be discovered until the 20th century, he was clearly wrong.
> 
> Donald Knuth has done extensive work on reconstructing Sumerian cuneiform tablets containing engineering-related algorithms (e.g. how to determine the volume of a cistern), though this work was actually done in the 70s.
> 
> Ancient Egyptians also used algorithms for a kind of binary multiplication and division, though mostly I just wanted the connection to the Egyptian dream temple in "A Whole World Out There". The Papyrus of Ani is another name for the Egyptian Book of the Dead. Raymond Faulkner did actually identify six new spells in his 1994 translation.
> 
> Forever Dreaming Transcripts (http://transcripts.foreverdreaming.org/viewforum.php?f=75) are an amazing resource.


End file.
